Sunday morning birdwatch

This morning is very wet here in Bucks, so this morning's birdwatch was a little tricky. I did plan to do it yesterday, but I was both short of time and short of battery power in my camera. I was unable to take the film from the "birdwatch hut" as I now call it, because the rain was driving right into the window. This means the footage was taken from my bedroom (further from the feeders). There was also a problem with uploading one of the videos onto Blip, so I'm afraid that there is only one video so far. I will try to upload it later and update the post. This mornings videos will show some of our garden pests, as well as a few other visitors.

I find that most of the time, the birds I regard as pests tend to visit at the same time. The Grey Squirrel, Magpie and Collared Dove below all visited in the space of about 5 minutes. The Collared Dove was sat on the bird bath getting very wet in the proccess. It did eventually take a drink, and then flew off. The rain outside made the video quality decrease, as you will find with the Magpie clip. If you look carefully however, you will see that the Grey Squirrel actually scares off the Magpie (which doesn't happen very often). Please check back tomorrow for the video of them.

Quite a few finches visited this morning. I often find that in the wet weather, these birds can be the only ones to visit. The Greenfinches and Goldfinches used all 4 perches of the feeder as you will see in the video below. Again, the video isn't the best and the colours are quite washed out but it does give you an idea of how they feed together. The Goldfinch is personally one of my favourite birds, and even in the bad light this morning their colours are still very bright.



I wonder what the birds are doing in Shirls garden in Scotland. I hope she sees some more exotic birds than I saw this morning. Its interesting to compare photos and text about birds in different parts of the world. You would be surprised about just how different the sightings are. Just in case you didn't know, it was Feed the Birds Day yesterday and today, so get feeding! Also, there are plenty of events going on around the country that you can get involved in. I certainly made sure that the birds were well fed yesterday and today.

All videos were taken in my garden this morning.

Pesky squirrels

I went yesterday and today to try and get some capture of birds (which I did get a bit of), but there was another visitor at the end of our garden which I didn't expect. A Grey Squirrel was on one of the branches of the apple tree at the end of our garden. It wasn't actually on the bird feeder, which was surprising. I filmed it while it was on the branch, but it scurried off, presumably because of my presence. I thought that would be the last I would see of it, but I heard some rustling in the tree and it came out again with an apple in its paws. Grrr...




It actually stayed there for quite a while but I didn't want to make the clips too long. It is when you get up close to animals like the Grey Squirrel and the Domestic Cat that you realise just how dominative they are. The birds just don't feed while the squirrel is there. The squirrel must be quite strong as it is able to hold the weight of the apple. It also must have had to take the apple off the branch. These creatures won't be beaten. It amused me when it nearly dropped the large apple, but managed to keep it in its grasps.

I wonder if squirrels feed at night. I must say that I have never seen them in the evenings. On the other hand they are much more secretive than the pigeons that actually manage to feed from the bird feeder by perching on the feeder pole. Before I started this blog, one of the squirrels managed to break our previous nut feeder. We have a more squirrel proof one now, so they struggle to get anything out.

It obviously prefers the apples to the sunflower hearts that I put in the feeders and hanging bird table. I have never seen them eat apples before though. I thought that they primarily ate peanuts and other various foods lying on the woodland floor. To be honest we don't harvest the apple tree anyway so it isn't a disaster that the squirrel is eating them, but they don't half make a mess! The one I was watching ate some of the apple and then just dropped it on the floor.

There was a while in our garden when there were no squirells at all, but they have returned again now. They seem to have definate good breeding years and definate bad breeding years. I would really like to get photos of birds feeding on some of the rotten apples that have fallen from the tree. Blackbirds are probably the most likely garden birds to feed on fallen fruit. I guess the videos above are a start, and are squirrels just as bad as we say they are? After all, they are just doing the same thing as the birds. Feeding to survive.